Britain’s Next Prime Minister Has Probably Already Lost Scotland
While the Tories squabble over Brexit in London, the Scots are reminded of how alien all that English politicking is.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon delivers a speech on post-Brexit relations between Scotland and the EU, in Brussels on June 11.
Photographer: Francois Lenoir/Reuters
When it opened in 1998, the National Museum of Scotland captured the mood at large in the U.K. Those were the heady early days of the Blair government, Cool Britannia was in vogue, and transferring powers from London to the kingdom’s constituent nations was a policy imperative. It was the year of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland; in Scotland, voters had just chosen—in what was then a rare referendum—to reinstate a Scottish Parliament after almost 300 years.
With the U.K. in political turmoil and much of England hellbent on pursuing a split from the European Union that Scotland voted against, the museum is again in tune with the age. Only now, the exhibits displaying Scotland’s birth as a sovereign European nation and its oversize influence abroad seem more like a call to arms than a statement of British diversity. It’s hard to filter out the current strains tearing at the fabric of the U.K. when viewing galleries documenting Scotland’s early efforts to assert a distinct identity, the role of Scots in shaping Canada, Australia, and the U.S., or the numerous Scottish pioneers who helped create the modern world.